Olive feels as if the ‘videos’ of abuse are in her head and follow her everywhere
All names and identifying details have been changed.
Participants have given us permission to share their experiences.
Olive grew up in the 1950s with her parents and two brothers. Her mother was violent but she knows she was loved by her father, ‘though he said little’.
She was sexually abused by her eldest brother, and by an elderly neighbour in whose home she sought refuge from the abuse she suffered from family members.
Olive relates that she and one of her brothers were close to their father, and her other brother was closer to their mother. She says her mother would always blame her for things, and she believes her mother was jealous of her closeness to her father. Her mother would punch Olive and pull her hair, and make her fetch heavy implements so she could hit her sons with them.
Along with the violent abuse, Olive was also subjected to sexual abuse by her eldest brother.
An elderly neighbour knew that her mother was violent and took advantage of her vulnerability. When she was still at primary school he began to groom her and her friends with games of hide and seek, and gifts of small animals that were kept in a cage in his house.
She recalls she and several other young girls played truant to go to the neighbour’s house. The girls would bathe there together and the elderly neighbour sexually abused them for several years. Olive says that one of her brothers found out what was happening and sent a note threatening the elderly man, but it did not stop bim.
She suffered more sexual abuse from another adult, with whom she and her eldest brother would stay in the holidays. He was an uncle by marriage and he also groomed Olive with toys. Later he would get into bed between Olive and her brother and abuse her.
School was often not a happy place for Olive. She recounts how one teacher dragged her by her hair when she spilt ink. Later, she found another teacher she really liked and in desperation for her attention she would get into trouble so she would be sent to her.
She says the teacher would never really tell her off. Olive feels this teacher really cared but she felt she could never say what was happening to her. She says ‘I wish really that she’d sussed it’.
Olive’s eldest brother died in an accident when he was in his teens. The family were grieving and she thinks she was too but has wondered since why, since it was also a relief for her. She told her parents about the sexual abuse by her brother decades later. Her father believed her and was devastated.
Olive was in a violent marriage that ended when she was expecting her second child. She is very proud of her daughter and feels very protective of her. She says her daughter tells her off for praising her too much and adds ‘I fight 24 hours a day not to be like my mother’.
It worries Olive that she finds it hard to recall details of the past but she feels as if the ‘videos’ of abuse are in her head and follow her everywhere. She reflects ‘There has always been abuse – always. It never stops. My life is never going to be happy and jolly’.
Olive has had counselling but has not found it helpful. She says ‘I am becoming more and more of a recluse’. She says she cannot sit next to a man on a bus and sometimes she worries about ‘what the point of it all is’.
She feels very concerned that parents should not be so trusting of other people that their children spend time with. She would like schools to hold groups, run by someone specially trained, where children could feel safe to talk.
Olive would dearly like to write books to help children faced with abuse – she believes that a character designed especially to encourage children to talk about abuse would be a great benefit.